Results from Pet Food Survey

During the month of June, TruthaboutPetFood.com initiated an informal survey. Does type or style of feeding influence obesity. Here’s what we learned.

We received 205 responses to the survey; 48 cats (23%), 157 dogs (77%).
149 (73%) were considered ‘Fit’; 28 cats, 121 dogs.
35 (17%) were considered to be ‘Slightly Overweight’; 8 cats, 27 dogs.
21 (10%) were considered to be ‘Overweight’; 12 cats, 9 dogs.

National statistics of pet obesity is very different than our survey; FoxNews reported that 35% of pets are overweight. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,334679,00.html Even if Slightly Overweight and Overweight results were added together, our survey remains lower than national statistics.

Results could be lower due to pet owner education; certainly pet owners that visit this website are far more educated than the majority. Or perhaps high obesity results are provided to the media to subliminally promote the sale of weight loss pet foods.

Our results also showed several pets as Overweight despite being fed a weight loss pet food. Regardless as to what type or style of food being fed, our survey showed lower results than reported national averages of overweight pets.

Of the 99 pet owners that fed strictly one type of food…
73 Pets (73%) were considered Fit
16 Pets (16%) were considered Slightly Overweight
10 Pets (10%) were considered Overweight

Of the 106 Pet Owners that fed multiple styles of food…
76 Pets (72%) were considered Fit
19 Pets (18%) were considered Slightly Overweight
11 Pets (10%) were considered Overweight

Results here are very similar. According to our informal survey, there is no significant difference in weight between pets fed only one type of food as to pets fed multiple types of food. However, I had hoped to discover more pets being fed a variety of food types. (Suggestion…mix it up! Add some meat or fish and fresh vegetables to your pets food several times a week, variety is the spice of your pets life too.)

As you can see, there is a wide variety of pet foods being fed from our survey participants. Significantly, of the overweight pets, 45% were fed a pet food that contained by-products, animal fat, or similar rendered ingredients. (Get rid of those foods that contain any by-product ingredient, animal fat, meat and bone meal, animal digest, or beef and bone meal.)

Thank you to everyone that participated in this informal survey! We’ll do more of these in the future.

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Comment1

Laura
Oct 01, 2015

I know this article is old, but I’d like to point out that one reason pets consuming better food tend to be thinner might be cost. Given that quality pet food costs significantly more than cheap garbage feed, pet parents who aren’t rolling in dough are going to be more mindful of portion control so as not to waste money, versus those who let their pet eat as much junk as they please because it doesn’t cost much.